Blog: Music - Page 23

Read our latest daily deep dives, hot takes, and exciting updates about the entertainment world. Check out the latest insight from your favourite analyst, or search by coverage areas - music, entertainment and fandom, creator economy and social.

Why Kanye West is the modern-day Prince

Mark Mulligan

18 Sep 2020

Music

Not ‘prince’ in the Machiavelliansense of the term – though there is an argument for that too – but as in the artist formerly known as. Back in 1992, Prince fought his label Warner Bros to get ownership of his rights and more creative control, struggling to get out of a deal he signed when h...

Quick Take: Apple One – Recession Buster

Mark Mulligan

15 Sep 2020

Video Music Games

Apple officially announced its long anticipated all-in-one content bundle: Apple One. $14.95 gets you Apple Music, Arcade, Apple TV+ and 50GB of iCloud storage. A family plan retails at $19.95 and a premier plan includes 1TB storage, News and Apple’s new Fitness+ service.

Is it time for the music industry to rethink how it wants to participate in the gaming opportunity?

Karol Severin

4 Sep 2020

music industry Gaming cross-entertainment strategy

Music consumption, particularly in the West, is commoditised. Transforming from the economies of ownership to access and the removal of production and distribution barriers led to the devaluation of, not necessarily ‘the song’, but of ‘ listening to a song’ .

What AWAL’s $100k artists mean for the streaming economy

Mark Mulligan

14 Aug 2020

Music

Kobalt’s AWAL division announced that‘hundreds of its artists have reached [the] annual streaming revenue threshold [of $100,000]’ . Make no mistake, this is major milestone for a record label that has around 1% global market share.

The Song Economy Part 3 – creating in the song economy

Keith Jopling

13 Aug 2020

Music Strategy Spotify

In ‘ The Song Economy is just getting started ’ I looked at how major catalogue songs such as Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’, Toto’s Africa and Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You had all spent many years accumulating streams (audio and video), radio plays and ultimately for...

Apple to launch subscription bundle – we called it!

Mark Mulligan

13 Aug 2020

Video Music Games

In MIDiA’s 2020 Predictions report published in December 2019 we predicted that tech majors would start creating subscription bundles, with Apple leading the fray. Lo and behold, news has just come out that Apple is working on ‘ Apple One’ – a multi-genre subscription bundle that will includ...

Streaming’s remuneration model cannot be ‘fixed’

Mark Mulligan

12 Aug 2020

Music Streaming remuneration

The #brokenrecord debate continues to build momentum and new models such as user-centric are getting increased attention, including at governmental level in the UK. But as Mat Dryhurst correctly observes , there is a risk of the market falling into streaming fatalism; that the obsession with trying ...

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Newsflash: UMG, WMG and Spotify may have a problem with Tencent

Mark Mulligan

7 Aug 2020

Music Tencent Tencent Music Entertainment

UPDATE: A White House official confirmed to the LA Times that the announcement, at this stage, will not affect Tencent shareholdings of companies and clarified that the order only refers to transactions 'related to' WeChat.

COVID-19 hit major labels much harder than it did Spotify

Mark Mulligan

5 Aug 2020

Music Streaming revenue major label streaming revenue

COVID-19 was always going to have a significant impact on the music business, and with the Q2 results for all of the major music companies now in we can start to look at just how big that impact has been so far.

We are at a turning point for social music

Mark Mulligan

4 Aug 2020

Music Snap Snapchat

In recent days we have seen three major developments that, collectively, are a potential pivot point for social music: 1. TikTok close to a US-entity buyout by Microsoft to avoid potential sanctions, following hot on the heels of an India blackout 2.

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Why Spotify needs Russia

Mark Mulligan

16 Jul 2020

Music Spotify Russia

Spotify’s delayed Russia launch finally happened this week . While it did not drive a stock price growth like the Josh Rogan deal did (the stock closed just 1 cent higher than the previous day’s close) it will actually prove much more important in the medium term.

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How the DNA of a hit has changed over 20 years

Mark Mulligan

13 Jul 2020

Music hits the song economy

Updated on 13/03/2025: Five years is a long time in the fast-changing music industry. To see how the DNA of a hit has evolved since this blog was published, check out our latest post by MIDiA's music researcher, Olivia Jones: " How the DNA of a hit changed in the last five years ".

Time to stop playing the velocity game

Mark Mulligan

3 Jul 2020

Music Streaming music marketing

We all know that streaming has transformed consumption and business models alike, but this is not a ‘now-completed’ process. Instead, it is one that continues to evolve at pace, and the dynamic of pace is the pivotal variable.

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Just what is Tencent’s Endgame?

Mark Mulligan

16 Jun 2020

Tencent Tencent Music China

Tencent’s combined $200 million investment in WMG follows on the heels of its $3.6 billion joint investment in Universal Music. It is hardly Tencent’s first investments in music, having spent $6.2 billion on music investments since 2016.

Music Streaming Needs a New Future

Mark Mulligan

12 Jun 2020

Alibaba China Fandom

While doing some research on the Chinese streaming market I came across this fantastic UX tear down of Xiami Music . I recommend you read it in full. The day before I found this–also must-read–article on Beyoncé’s streaming strategy ,which explains how she uses different platforms to segment ...

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Artists are Learning How it Feels to be a Songwriter

Mark Mulligan

8 Jun 2020

artist income Artists broken record

The ‘broken record’ streaming debate that continues to rage on is a natural consequence of the instantaneous collapse of live music revenue following lockdown. As soon as it was clear that live was going to be gone for some time , MIDiA predicted that the artist backlash against streaming royalt...

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The Global Music Industry Will Decline in 2020

Mark Mulligan

3 Jun 2020

live music decline live music forecasts music industry forecasts

Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings but the global music industry will decline in 2020. Although we are now nearing the post-lockdown era in many countries across the globe, we are only just at the start of the recession phase that is coming next.

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The Music Industry’s Next Five Growth Drivers

Mark Mulligan

22 May 2020

creator tools Fandom fitness

The risk with trying to imagine what the future might look like is to simply think it is going to be a brighter, shinier version of today. At this precise moment in time, this has perhaps never been truer.

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The Future of Live

Mark Mulligan

20 May 2020

Fortnite Games live

The almost total cessation of live music has sent shockwaves throughout the wider music industry. Though live companies are clearly at the epicentre, labels and streaming services are the in the blast radius too as the gaping hole left in most artists’ income is causing them to question their othe...

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Radio strategies 2020 & beyond

Keith Jopling

18 May 2020

Music

This is part 2 of our blog on Radio’s future and focuses on strategies for radio networks. MIDiA’s full report “Radio Is Switched On Again / Strategies for 2020 and Beyond” is now available to subscribers.

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